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New Knoxville boys hoops downs Botkins, 49-42

BOTKINS — At the end of the third quarter it looked like the New Knoxville Rangers basketball team was going to cruise to an easy victory against the Botkins Trojans, but it turned out to be anything but an easy game as the Rangers had to hold on and hit free throws down the stretch for a 49-42 victory at Botkins.

“We were able to pull away at the end of the game,” Rangers head coach Kort Fledderjohann said. “You have to give credit to Botkins. In the second half we have a 14-point lead and they dug in and came at us. They put a lot of pressure on us and made it tough on us and they did a good job in their comeback.”

A trio of Rangers scored 12 points to lead the way. Andrew Arnett, Jake Allen and Shane Topp each reached the dozen mark.

Going into the fourth quarter New Knoxville had a comfortable 40-26 lead, but the quarter started out bad for the Rangers. Roger Miller hit one of two free throws on the third foul by Isaac Kuntz with 7:33 left.

“We came out a little bit too late,” Botkins head coach Brett Meyer said. “We needed to attack them a little more throughout the game which we didn’t do. Give New Knoxville credit because they played hard and they took it at us, but we had a pretty good comeback at the end. In the fourth quarter we played man defense but picked it up more full court.”

New Knoxville (5-4) will travel to Marion Local next Friday for a MAC game and travel to Jackson Center on Saturday, while Botkins (8-2) will travel to Russia next Friday.